You’ve figured this out already, yes? Joseph goes on about the episode while watching it. Here be spoilers. Simultaneously published at StarsEndPodcast.com.

Watching Foundation S2E05

Space, a ship.

It must have been the Deliverance. We’re flashing back to just before Hari’s murder.

“I’m not angry, I love you.” “I know that too, Son.” Hari is awful. I’ve never understood why people love that line from Han Solo btw.

Scene shift. Pinocchio Hari is dreaming and talking to an image of Raych. Doubling down. “You got them all fooled. They think you care about them. But the truth is you don’t care about anyone.“

So we’re inside Hari’s head and this is about his insecurities. He still sucks though.

“I was your son and you let me die… we both know it wasn’t the first time.“ What the hell is that about?

The scene shift makes it unclear whether that was a dream or a hallucination. Now Hari is investigating his new body. Just pinch yourself, dude. No need to stick yourself with a knife. If there’s a tetanus booster on this ship at all it’s over a century old!

Space. Again. This time that’s clearly the Beggar.

Now Gaal and Salvor are mocking Hari for having legs. And speculating about Kalle. Maybe she wasn’t the manifestation of the Prime Radiant.

Hari says, “My body is as it was the moment before I died.” Great. So he’s terminally ill again? That seems to be a lot of wasted effort.

They jump to the conclusion that Hari’s been cloned. I have a hard time buying that there is a continuity of consciousness in that case. Teevee magic I guess, but it doesn’t work that way with the Cleons.

This loops us back around to “Measure of a Man” again. Specifically, why Data did not want to be disassembled. Except it’s even harder to believe with an organic human.

“Someone wanted you to be flesh and blood again. And after all that trouble you went to, turning yourself into an idea.” That’s funny.

Everyone’s being incongruously flippant in this scene.

The Empire had to physically send someone to Siwenna for an update. These three learn what’s up with the Foundation by listening to the radio. How does that work?

On the Foundation’s religious phase, Hari says, “It was bound to happen. People do love to kneel.” This might be my favorite line from this episode.

Ignus looks a lot nicer than Oona’s World. The Empire abandoned it a millennium ago.

“Negative ionic particles in the atmosphere have caused a system reboot.“

That’s funny, but it made me Google “Negative ionic particles.” They’re abundant and caused by things like sunlight and waterfalls. There might even be health benefits. They’re not going to bring down a starship. Make up some new substance for your technobabble. Star Trek learned that early on when they switched from lithium to dilithium.

“I’m flying dead stick!” “Is that bad?” Is funny.

“Pain is exhilarating.” “In small doses.” They’re really playing up the comedy.

Then the Beggar crashes into a bunch of trees like in Star Trek: Generations. Where’s Gordi LaForge when you need him?

It’s disappointing after Salvor’s arc last season that her first instinct is to grab a firearm.

Trantor

Markley is reporting to Sereth and Rue. They’ve only learned a little bit.

Base personality for Sareth: shy and sad. But that version died with the rest of her family, she says.

“She wants to copulate!” Is funny. But man, look at Day. That appears to be real anxiety! Demerzel reassures him. Are they just emphasizing that he’s insecure, or is he deteriorating in some way?

But the — flirting doesn’t describe it — is off putting. Is this all a consequence of Demerzel messing with him? Could this be a cumulative consequence of mental manipulation?

“Think of me…” then the clenched fist. Uh… okay… coach? Ugh. I’ve had about enough of this.

“Come in, Sereth, I’ve been anticipating you.” This is all so stilted that I’m uncomfortable even while I’m laughing.

The orbital rings were originally designed to be invisible from the ground but C-17 wanted them to be seen, “like a shackle around the world.” Two things:

1. This is another indication that C-17 is insecure. It’s an ostentatious display of his… “potency.” But:

2. Practically everyone is indoors. Why not just tweak the projections on the ceilings? Or have they profoundly changed the nature of Trantor over the last 150 years? Working theory: the writers forgot or are ignoring things that don’t suit their narratives. There’s a small possibility that the vernacular on Trantor is based on the fiction that there are no domes, but that seems unlikely.

Shouldn’t the technology exist to make the room damage invisible? This looks like a college student tried to hide the nail holes in the wall with blue toothpaste.

Now that Sereth has seen the damage around the room she seems anxious to get down to business.

The man needs to be on top! More insecurity? But then all the awkwardness. And things turn ugly. Sereth beautifully turns it around. “I was trying to figure out if it is safe to live here!” But it’s still ugly. Not at all like her chemistry with C-18.

A summary to Demerzel, followed by “we’re engaged,” *awkward smile.* And we learn that Day did have her family killed.

But more importantly, C-17 really seems off mentally, and to some degree that’s mirrored back by Demerzel.

“30 Years Earlier” kinda.

We flashback to C-16’s encounter with Rue. The perspective shifts, C-16 and Rue are watching the video in the present. I bet there’s also a mirror on the ceiling.

Rue wants to see when he selected her from Gossamer Court. We see that Rue is clever, but we already knew that. The important information here is that it’s not obvious when a memory has been removed, and Rue suggests to C-16 that perhaps his memories have been edited. That’s a thought that’s going to fester.

That said, while Rue claimed it’s very hard to tell whether your memory has been edited, she describes a clear discontinuity, the obvious sensation of lost time that is abundant in UFO narratives.

I still think the Cleons would never allow the concubines to have any awareness of the encounter.

Ignus

It’s like another Dungeons and Dragons moment when Salvor encounters a guy in a hoodie. I hope she noticed that his skin changed color.

No such luck. She think’s that’s Hugo. He gives a long narrative that barely manages to be plausible. Don’t trust it.

Back on the Beggar, Gaal and Hari are discussing Salvor’s future. It’s softer than the conversation from the last episode, but it still misses the point. The future is mutable; if you change the big stuff, all the details will be different.

“… an embryo is a very different proposition to an actual person.”

Salvor brings “Hugo” to the ship. She should be smarter but I suppose wishful thinking can be pretty powerful.

Hari is suspicious and asks Hugo how tall he is. Hugo says he’s just under 2 m tall. That’s close to 6’7”. 181 cm is about 5’11”.

Hari moves on to weight and fixates on a difference of 3 kg. The difference of 3 kg between what Hugo and Salvor should weigh together. That’s about 7 pounds; a pretty trivial difference after 150 years, even if you ignore the fact that the two are carrying equipment. Shrinking 8 inches is a lot harder than gaining a few pounds.

On the other hand, I think the writers are bad at the metric system. You’re not going to sweat 7 pounds off in the jungle and it isn’t merely a few beers. It’s a bit much, even if you are being hyperbolic.

It all becomes moot as the sensors detect life forms approaching the ship.

Then they’re in a big kerfuffle which ends with “Hugo” saying “Unthink their Minds.” They should have led with that.

Trantor

Sareth and friends are back at the Banyan Tree. She seems to be learning things about the assassination attempt that the instigator would already know. But the memory audits come into play. They can’t get a Cleon’s but maybe one of the Doctors’.

Nice touch with the keeper’s eyes. But that shouldn’t have worked and Markley is going to wind up dead.

Dusk questions Demerzel about memory adjustments. Day took complete power over that after the attack. Dusk wants to know how he could figure out if his memory has been changed.

They like doing effects with people’s eyes this season.

Markley brings the memory audit to Sareth and Rue. They learn Demerzel is a robot. That will have huge consequences, I think. It’s clear these three never even pondered that possibility.

But this is interesting. Sereth says, “I’ve touched her hand. It was warm and alive.”

Compare this to what Gaal says about Kalle. In Episode 3 it’s “I’m telling you, she felt alive!” In this episode, it’s “I met her, she’s as solid as me, but she didn’t register as living on our scopes.”

Kalle is almost certainly a robot.

I thought Demerzel, having decentralized consciousness meant within her body but maybe I’m wrong. Maybe Kalle is an avatar of Demerzel.

But I don’t think that is likely. I think “Kalle” is actually Dors Venabili, who interfaced with the Prime Radiant to communicate with Hari (rather than it becoming sentient). I think that the image of Kalle is a second attempt by Dors, after Yanna, to put Hari at ease. We’ll be formally introduced soon.

Dawn and Dusk are going to drop a few quarters into the fortune-telling machine that is Cleon the First.

C-1 is no help. “If you become divided, you dishonor me, and what I devised.“

“I am here to give you what you need. Nothing more.”

I wonder how often Demerzel consults this simulacrum.

Now Dawn and Dusk want to see the size of the memory files for all the Cleons. That alone seems silly. I wonder if there will be dozens or hundreds more Cleons than they expected.

They’re pondering if they are no longer at the “top of the heap” or if they are in danger.

Dusk ponders his legacy and what Day is up to. “I should have seen this coming.”

To Dusk: “Perhaps Day did you a favor by giving away your chair.”

Dusk and Dawn’s memory files aren’t suspiciously small but C-1’s is startlingly large.

Incidentally, if they only alter Cleons’ memories so they don’t know that they died I’d like to see how C-14b turned out, having the memories of someone who was colorblind, betrayed, and hunted. I’ll bet that guy was an even bigger mess than usual.

Ignus

Salvor, Gaal, and Hari wake up in a hut.

Hey! There’s that staircase from the trailer.

They find the group of people we saw with telepathic powers earlier. Is this the nucleus of the Second Foundation?

Pa’a introduces herself as a goddess.

This is annoying. Pa’a introduced herself as “remote” yet Hari making’s a big deal of her not casting a shadow. Yet it works; in another Oz reference, Tellum Bond is revealed. So why the “remote” comment?

The real Tellum Bond called Hari “mentally incomplete.” She called Gaal and Salvor to Ignus because of their mental abilities. Mentalics = “sighted.”

“Do not worship children. It is not good for them.“ Does that explain Michael Jackson? My theory has been that he peaked when he was ten.

A refuge for Telepaths, many of whom had to flee their homes before they were killed, like Gaal.

They do recognize that using Hugo’s image was quite a violation.

All that stuff with Raych’s at the start of the episode was Tellum Bond trying to read Hari. “Hari’s very murky inside,” she says.

We end with Tellum Bond learning of the Prime Radiant. “I will find it and break it. There’s not going to be a Second Foundation.”

Still good, but sloppy. We’re certainly off the break-neck pace of the first two episodes. That’s fine as long as we don’t try to cram The Mule in here.

All Images from Foundation on Apple TV+.

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Let’s get back to “Watching Foundation!” As always, here are Joseph’s initial reactions, wild theories, and a few digressions from watching the episode. One digression is more extensive than usual. You have been warned. Incidentally, this is our milestone 100th post over at StarsEndPodcast.com. Let’s go!

Watching Foundation S2E04

In the narration, “If your parents never met, you wouldn’t exist… everyone in the universe is the result of a unique set of pairings. And psychohistory doesn’t care about them at all.”

Kudos to saying the right thing about Psychohistory but on the larger point about whether or not you would exist this seems optimistic. I think if anything had even a minor effect on the circumstances of your conception you wouldn’t exist. I’m not going to research the probabilities involved here but my best guess is that you’re lucky if the resulting individual is as close to you as an identical twin. But it might be someone who’s as unlike you as any of your siblings. Or someone who doesn’t exist at all.

Constant and Poly are waking up on the Spirit. When we see Hober he’s still being played for comic relief.

According to a (very) quick internet search, constant sunlight wouldn’t be good for wine. This from Calwineries: “At the same time, too much direct sun exposure can burn the fruit and will lead to excessive sugar development. The result is unbalanced wines with a lack of acidity and too much alcohol.”

Now I’m pondering if a planet that’s tidally locked could support life.

Asimov wrote about a tidally locked planet in Foundation and Empire.

Radole was a small world – and, in military potential, perhaps the weakest of the twenty-seven. That, by the way, was another factor in the logic of the choice. It was a ribbon world – of which the Galaxy boasts sufficient, but among which, the inhabited variety is a rarity for the physical requirements are difficult to meet. It was a world, in other words, where the two halves face the monotonous extremes of heat and cold, while the region of possible life is the girdling ribbon of the twilight zone.

Such a world invariably sounds uninviting to those who have not tried it, but there exist spots, strategically placed – and Radole City was located in such a one. It spread along the soft slopes of the foothills before the hacked-out mountains that backed it along the rim of the cold hemisphere and held off the frightful ice.

The warm, dry air of the sun-half spilled over, and from the mountains was piped the water-and between the two, Radole City became a continuous garden, swimming in the eternal morning of an eternal June.

Isaac Asimov, in Foundation and Empire

What I really want is a science essay by Asimov that specifically discusses whether “ribbon worlds” could be habitable. I read “Time and Tide” from Asimov on Astronomy, which was pretty good, but it wasn’t what I was looking for. It might be more of a Clarke topic.

This website speculates that the exoplanet Gliese 581g could be habitable despite being tidally locked. It’s out of date though: the latest information is that Gliese_581g doesn’t even exist.

But I digress.

Constant and Hober have chemistry. These two are cute together.

They arrive on Terminus and head towards the Vault.

Trantor

We learn more about Queen Sereth’s motives: she wants the truth about what happened to her family; C-17’s denials clearly weren’t enough. “I know how to employ courtesan tricks.”

Surprisingly, it’s C-18 with whom she’s spending time. These two also have chemistry, a more casual and comfortable flavor than between Sereth and Brother Day.

That’s a great tree! Is it a Banyan?

Blunt as usual, Sereth brings up the assassination attempt. I know we’re supposed to be suspicious here, but was the timing really that suspicious? And she asks Dawn about whether Day had her family killed. This is less “courtesan tricks” and more “bull in a China shop.”

“I was a million steps from the throne” and “then one mysterious crash later, and suddenly there I am“ don’t mesh for me.

This Dawn claims he wouldn’t be capable of the assassination of Sereth’s family but “I am well prepared to think I could become capable of it.” That is an interesting admission.

It’s asymmetric but both of them are trying to play the other; the politics here is dense. Sereth ends with the notion that she and Dawn could have been paired. These two are certainly more age-appropriate for each other. The point of that seems obvious. Could there be something more subtle there? And is the kid always going to have problems stemming from romance?

Now a scene with Dusk and Rue. C-16 implies that dominion pigments are better than what the Empire usually has. Not sure if that changes anything from the gifting scene in the first episode.

They walk by a picture of the mural that has to be Demerzel. It must be her because the solar system motif from the jewelry box is behind the figure. It looks to me as though it depicts the positronic conflict from the last episode of season one. I’m sure we’ll be coming back to this.

They talk about their history together. “I thought I had lost count of my Cleons.“

“You might be the last Dusk, and the first grandfather Cleon” is pretty damn aggressive.

Then talk about how Rue doesn’t remember their time together because as we know, courtesans have their memories wiped. Allowing a courtesan to even know that there had been a liaison with one of the Cleons seems completely inconsistent with how those assholes conduct their business. It also seems like a dumb decision on their part that never would have happened except the writers wanted to go with this plot.

But memories and memory suppression are clearly recurring themes in this season.

Siwenna

“Love itself is inconsequential when measured against the scale of the Galaxy.” Gaal is quite the Ray of sunshine here. Is this her being an unreliable narrator?

Riose and his ship have arrived.

Boy, the transporters in this universe are really inefficient, and filled with unnecessary spectacle!

The first time through, I spent this sequence being sure that Glawin was going to die.

What’s with all these things that look like gigantic antlion sand pits?

This sequence doesn’t add much to the episode except Bel and Glawin are arguing at the end of it. Is that what Gaal was alluding to in her narration?

“By the time you recognize an atrocity, you may have already been complicit in one” is wise, but ominous.

Terminus. At the Vault.

Hober’s “It doesn’t work like this” is a hot take and a correct one.

“Governance depends on me continuing to govern.” Coward.

The vault, first of all, seems to use time lord technology. It’s bigger on the inside of course, but also time passed differently for Hober in the vault, two days rather than two minutes. Constant and Poly didn’t notice even though there was a similar gap between when those too entered. Are we supposed to take from this that time passes inconsistently inside the vault? Are the writers just being sloppy?

“We’re inside the mathematics of Hari Seldon.“ No, you’re literally inside Hari Seldon himself.

This does seem a lot like the inside of the prime radiant though.

Those blue contacts really make Isabella Laughland look intense.

“I see by your robes that the foundation has entered the religious phase.“ That’s a decent callback to the books. Then Hari pats Brother Constant on the head. Who’s a good girl? Who’s a good girl? Is it you? Who’s a good girl?

So Hari knows Director Sermak and he knows Hober Mallow but he doesn’t recognize Poly and he didn’t know that the Foundation had entered its religious phase. Sigh.

Poly gets that the Vault is a tesseract. This makes me want to go back and reread Heinlein’s “And he built a crooked house.”

Hari says he wants to prevent the coming war.

Siwenna

Bel and Glawin approach a dwelling.

“Fleet Supremus?”

We’ve swapped Onum Barr and Ducem Barr. Whoever he is, he’s been sending reports to the empire for 40 years.

Is an oval bookshelf one of those things that are supposed to look science fictional but aren’t?

“Books are for old men.”

Glawin, “Here’s to those who fight and ask why.” Ducem is beside himself with approval!

This is twice now. What are the writers implying?

Ducem shows Bel and Glawin some reruns. They quickly learned important stuff about the Foundation and its technology: jump ships, and personal shields. Bel is dubious.

The “Local Constabulary” arrives and Ducem asks to be shot in the head. Not sure that isn’t stupid. If nothing else it’s a waste of a good character… unless he has the imperial nanobots, maybe?

And again, with the laughably efficient transporters. A futuristic pneumatic tube seems like the worst possible way to attain orbit. Especially without a ship of some sort.

Terminus.

Hari offering Sermak wine that was literally made from his body is way too “on point.”

We learn that the prime radiant is “a quantum computer that exists in a state of superposition.” Quantum computers seem like magic, but maybe not that magic.

Hari is assigning people homework.

Sermak is dismissed out of hand. Constant and Poly get to be envoys to the Empire. Poly: “An agent of peace. Yes. That’s something worth being.”

“The honor is mine, my loyal child” is much better than a pat on the head. I was afraid he was going to scratch her behind her ears.

Fine suit. Now piss off. Lol.

And we learn hologram, Hari, like any AI, needs the three laws. He “had to” kill the warden. “For a god to be effective you have to be intermittently wrathful.”

Then, this, “I heard the warden on my doorstep. How long before he declared himself the only holy vessel worthy of my spirit?”

On the one hand, that’s an apt critique of organized religion. But it seems at odds with a policy of using an ersatz religion to expand the Foundation.

“Let no being presume upon my mercy.” *WINK*

I enjoyed Hober calling out Hari on his BS.

Hari in turn, calls religion “A developmental stage, that all successful civilizations go through.” But can you go through that stage legitimately if it’s all a con? Did the United States have a religious stage? Is it right, freaking now? Is the Church of the Galactic Spirit akin to the US’s current religious status quo with megachurches and pastors using the trappings of Christianity to their own ends?

Hober gets his own homework and it’s not being an agent of peace.

Trantor

Sarath, Rue, and the Handman are beneath the banyan tree. They are joined by someone who is wearing an utterly ridiculous outfit.

The new guy, Markley, is worried. We learn that Cloud Dominion can block or reverse a memory wipe and fool a memory audit. Clear implications here about Rue.

Sarath wants information both about her parents’ assassination, and the assassination attempt on Day. She’s cold and matter-of-fact. Everything we have seen of her personality thus far could have been a front.

Terminus.

The sun has gone down, so a decent chunk of time must’ve passed. Hober is leaving the Vault.

I don’t believe that Hari said Hober could take the Spirit. By the way, the bishop’s claw in the Spirit is named Beki.

It’s actually Constant who calls out the sexual tension between her and Mallow. This could be foreshadowing that’s either good or bad. “I can’t help feeling that this is it” is ominous. [But the discussion on our podcast makes me think that Hober and Constant getting together could be equally ominous].

“Wenus” is funny. I did not expect to hear that name in the teevee show.

We end on a long wistful look between Constant and Hober and a bit more of Gaal’s narration. That narration always seems to be in counterpoint to what we’re seeing on the screen. “With few exceptions, attraction is entirely irrelevant to human history. It only matters on the small scale of the human heart.” I think this is the show trying too hard to misdirect us.

All Images from Foundation on Apple TV+.

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